Feb 27, 2023
Verdant Village - exodussoftware3
I'm not sure I have a good way to segway into this but big changes are coming. So big that I broke convention and didn't just name this "Insert name of month News Update". In fact, I don’t know that they could get much bigger.
To start with what has already been talked about prior. Thanks for the feedback recently on the map stuff. For those not in the know, I feel that the map is a bit too large for its own good. While I don’t (and don’t plan to) get rid of zones I do think some of them could use some trimming down and rearrangement. The currently plan is a widespread map recreation. Not everything will be touched and the general locations will likely remain the same but I think much of the map was created without much thought and before many ideas were implemented. Most of what I want to focus on is making it easier to navigate as well as adding more density to the world and the things you have in it. Less open space, more visual storytelling, and details to absorb as you move through the world. Also, more interactivity and integration of gameplay.
So that’s all the stuff that has already been talked about before so what’s all this goodbye to Verdant Village stuff? Well, it’s more of a see you later I suppose. Anyone who has played the game, browsed the discussions, discord, or reported a bug may have heard me mention this. Verdant Village is currently made via an engine called Construct 3, originally Construct 2 before it got ported up. Supposedly the port up didn’t cause issues, but sometimes I honestly wonder. Fair warning the next several paragraphs are reasoning for the changes. If you don’t want to read several paragraphs of that I decided to put in a TLDR though.
The point being, and Construct devs if you are somehow reading this, I’m sorry, I don’t think the engine works for PC. I’ll try to summarize because I don’t think most people care about the nitty gritty details of programming engines. Coding in the engine I think works fine, the issues stem almost fully from the export. Basically, Construct exports function through HTML, IE, a web browser. Since web code is generally understood by most machines this gives it a lot of versatility. That was their plan at least, I don’t think its going too well however. Mainly because all consoles (Switch, Xbox, Playstation) all dropped HTML support last generation, meaning no game made in Construct will work on them. This limits where you can release to PC and phone.
This is not terrible, or it wouldn’t be if it didn’t have its own issues. I can’t speak for phones as I’ve never tried them. I get the impression the engine has refocused onto the mobile market in recent years however. This leaves us with PC. To put things simply, in order to get a normal exe file that runs like a normal application on your desktop Construct takes that HTML export and wraps it with a shell program called NWjs. This gives the application the impression of being a normal application instead of something that opens in a browser window.
On the surface this likely doesn’t sound too terrible. It looks the same as a normal app so what’s the issue? Therein lies the rub. As an aside it is annoying to not be able to port to console and that feels like a waste, especially the case of the switch. I mean we are far from that reality, but having the option is appealing for obvious reasons. More relevant to the current situation are a variety of issues. During various releases on Steam I’ve had reports of the game not closing out entirely in Steam, hard crashes where the app closes itself, white screens (basically another hard crash), failure to integrate with Steam, black screen on launch, failure to start in any way whatsoever, and more. All this on top of the export process being a nightmare and having no way to really get these issues fixed culminates in a really bad user experience for some players.
I admittedly don’t know how widespread these issues are. Its easy for me as the dev to only see the issues that crop up as that is what gets reported. However, I find that, much like anyone programming something, I don’t want these things to happen ever. And I know if I bought a game and it just crashed on boot I would, understandably, be upset.
TLDR: Game is made in Construct 3. Construct 3 has many issues in my opinion that cause weird bugs and other issues.
So that’s the biggest part of the reasoning. The only other thing is that I’ve been developing this game for several years now. While I really don’t look forward to remaking it, I think it might be for the best. Something I believe I’ve mentioned before publicly is that I did not plan this game out as I should have. As I joked with my friend recently I remember writing up about a 13 page word document that was terribly vague and chalking the design up to “how hard can it be to make a farming game”.
I did plan out more as the game grew but it was always a bit more piecemeal with no firm document on what was supposed to happen or go into the game. For anyone who hasn’t programmed a game before, that’s a big no no. You don’t want to do this because a game is complicated. Even if it is properly planned out it is complicated. Not knowing everything you can before you start tends to cause your code to be a mess.
This is related because a few bugs that have been reported I’m finding nearly impossible to find. Likely the only way to truly get rid of them would be to rip out the system and start fresh, which would in turn cause more problems. So while I’m not super excited, I think this is honestly a fairly reasonable alternative for two reasons.
The first is that I can clean up code. I have several more years of experience and have learned quite a bit in my time making this game, usually the hard way. If I start fresh, I can likely make everything better in just about every sense of the word. The second thing, and likely the more important one, is that I can do what I failed to the first time, plan. I have a good sense of what I want this game to be at this point. Much of it is already in place but I can go back and ensure that I have the details sorted, and develop everything in a more cohesive manner that should enhance the game in general. Similar to the map rework this is less of a “time to make the whole thing again” and more “time to polish and make this the best it can be”.
As for engines I’ve been fiddling with a few in recent weeks. I narrowed it down between Unity and Game Maker as choices eventually. It took a while but I’ve landed on Game Maker as I think I like the IDE more and I feel it caters a bit better towards 2D games where Unity is more all purpose. For any who are wondering Game Maker also has a track record of games that have come to Steam and other platforms, Undertale, Hyperlight Drifter, Shovel Knight and Hotline Miami to name a few popular ones. I mention this only to say that unlike Construct I don’t expect to have export issues that cause the game to just crash or not work on random computers.
So, what does all this mean for you. Well, a lot, and also not much to be honest. As you are probably expecting the current game will stagnate for a bit. Attached with this update is a small patch that will hopefully address a few more issues that were brought up just to try and bring what’s there to a more stable state. After this however I plan to let it sit.
I will start the process of redeveloping the game as a sort of 2.0 version in Game Maker. I don’t know exactly when I’ll start uploading the new version. I’ll probably wait until its at least comparable to what it is now before doing so. To answer a question that might be on your mind, no, you will not have to repurchase the game. Once the new version is ready, I’ll just overwrite what is currently on Steam and you’ll have the new version.
I apologize for all of this however. If you asked me about 4 months ago if I thought I’d go in this direction I would have thought you were crazy. It’s a conclusion that took me some time to come to but has been in my idle thoughts for at least a year now. For a long time I believed I could just push through the issues and fix them but I eventually realized it just wasn’t meant to be. I feel sort of cliché saying this but I want this game to be the best I can make it. Its 100% a passion project and I want to do it justice. This seems to be a painful, but necessary step to accomplish that.
I do plan to continue posting updates on progress each month so I won’t just go completely silent but to be honest I don’t have a good idea of how long this will take. Once I get stuck in I’ll probably get a better idea. I can essentially cheat off of the current version of the game so it shouldn’t be nearly as intensive as making everything originally. Not to mention I wasted a ton of time in original development just learning and making systems that wouldn’t come to fruition. With a proper plan in place none of that should be much of a problem.
This is however where you all come in, if anyone is still reading this lol, I’m sorry its so long. As I think I’ve said in the past I don’t expect much in the form of feedback, but the game is early access and I believe hearing the opinions of players is important to the creation process. While I can’t promise anything, starting in a new engine does have many benefits. Most specifically, almost anything can be changed. So, if you have something you really want to see, or something you hate about the current game I’d love to hear it as I can take all that into account when creating the new one. I already have a laundry list of modifications I want to add to make the overall experience smoother. From little things like making the cooking interface easier to read at a glance to big things like remaking the map and maybe sprucing up farming to have a bit more substance.
Basically, everything is on the table at this point so feel free to let me know. I am going to say this one thing however, because I’m sure it would come up. Multiplayer. Multiplayer is something I’ve seen people request. While I think it would be cool, I have done some contemplating on the subject. As with planning I’m trying to look ahead for potential roadblocks. Multiplayer would be cool but I think that the game is already really big, putting it in a new engine will surely have its own complications. Trying to implement multiplayer on top of that would likely result in huge issues. While I wish I could do it, I think I have to make the decision to forgo it.
Anyway, thanks for reading, being patient, and generally awesome. I know this game isn’t some massive internet hit but it makes me happy to have any player base that enjoys something (flaws and all) that I’ve made. I hope that this signals the start of something even better that you all will get to enjoy.
And as usual, below is a list of the changes for the new patch, they are fairly minimal as it feels like a waste to really go hard when the game isn’t going to be developed in this engine anymore.
To start with what has already been talked about prior. Thanks for the feedback recently on the map stuff. For those not in the know, I feel that the map is a bit too large for its own good. While I don’t (and don’t plan to) get rid of zones I do think some of them could use some trimming down and rearrangement. The currently plan is a widespread map recreation. Not everything will be touched and the general locations will likely remain the same but I think much of the map was created without much thought and before many ideas were implemented. Most of what I want to focus on is making it easier to navigate as well as adding more density to the world and the things you have in it. Less open space, more visual storytelling, and details to absorb as you move through the world. Also, more interactivity and integration of gameplay.
So that’s all the stuff that has already been talked about before so what’s all this goodbye to Verdant Village stuff? Well, it’s more of a see you later I suppose. Anyone who has played the game, browsed the discussions, discord, or reported a bug may have heard me mention this. Verdant Village is currently made via an engine called Construct 3, originally Construct 2 before it got ported up. Supposedly the port up didn’t cause issues, but sometimes I honestly wonder. Fair warning the next several paragraphs are reasoning for the changes. If you don’t want to read several paragraphs of that I decided to put in a TLDR though.
The point being, and Construct devs if you are somehow reading this, I’m sorry, I don’t think the engine works for PC. I’ll try to summarize because I don’t think most people care about the nitty gritty details of programming engines. Coding in the engine I think works fine, the issues stem almost fully from the export. Basically, Construct exports function through HTML, IE, a web browser. Since web code is generally understood by most machines this gives it a lot of versatility. That was their plan at least, I don’t think its going too well however. Mainly because all consoles (Switch, Xbox, Playstation) all dropped HTML support last generation, meaning no game made in Construct will work on them. This limits where you can release to PC and phone.
This is not terrible, or it wouldn’t be if it didn’t have its own issues. I can’t speak for phones as I’ve never tried them. I get the impression the engine has refocused onto the mobile market in recent years however. This leaves us with PC. To put things simply, in order to get a normal exe file that runs like a normal application on your desktop Construct takes that HTML export and wraps it with a shell program called NWjs. This gives the application the impression of being a normal application instead of something that opens in a browser window.
On the surface this likely doesn’t sound too terrible. It looks the same as a normal app so what’s the issue? Therein lies the rub. As an aside it is annoying to not be able to port to console and that feels like a waste, especially the case of the switch. I mean we are far from that reality, but having the option is appealing for obvious reasons. More relevant to the current situation are a variety of issues. During various releases on Steam I’ve had reports of the game not closing out entirely in Steam, hard crashes where the app closes itself, white screens (basically another hard crash), failure to integrate with Steam, black screen on launch, failure to start in any way whatsoever, and more. All this on top of the export process being a nightmare and having no way to really get these issues fixed culminates in a really bad user experience for some players.
I admittedly don’t know how widespread these issues are. Its easy for me as the dev to only see the issues that crop up as that is what gets reported. However, I find that, much like anyone programming something, I don’t want these things to happen ever. And I know if I bought a game and it just crashed on boot I would, understandably, be upset.
TLDR: Game is made in Construct 3. Construct 3 has many issues in my opinion that cause weird bugs and other issues.
So that’s the biggest part of the reasoning. The only other thing is that I’ve been developing this game for several years now. While I really don’t look forward to remaking it, I think it might be for the best. Something I believe I’ve mentioned before publicly is that I did not plan this game out as I should have. As I joked with my friend recently I remember writing up about a 13 page word document that was terribly vague and chalking the design up to “how hard can it be to make a farming game”.
I did plan out more as the game grew but it was always a bit more piecemeal with no firm document on what was supposed to happen or go into the game. For anyone who hasn’t programmed a game before, that’s a big no no. You don’t want to do this because a game is complicated. Even if it is properly planned out it is complicated. Not knowing everything you can before you start tends to cause your code to be a mess.
This is related because a few bugs that have been reported I’m finding nearly impossible to find. Likely the only way to truly get rid of them would be to rip out the system and start fresh, which would in turn cause more problems. So while I’m not super excited, I think this is honestly a fairly reasonable alternative for two reasons.
The first is that I can clean up code. I have several more years of experience and have learned quite a bit in my time making this game, usually the hard way. If I start fresh, I can likely make everything better in just about every sense of the word. The second thing, and likely the more important one, is that I can do what I failed to the first time, plan. I have a good sense of what I want this game to be at this point. Much of it is already in place but I can go back and ensure that I have the details sorted, and develop everything in a more cohesive manner that should enhance the game in general. Similar to the map rework this is less of a “time to make the whole thing again” and more “time to polish and make this the best it can be”.
As for engines I’ve been fiddling with a few in recent weeks. I narrowed it down between Unity and Game Maker as choices eventually. It took a while but I’ve landed on Game Maker as I think I like the IDE more and I feel it caters a bit better towards 2D games where Unity is more all purpose. For any who are wondering Game Maker also has a track record of games that have come to Steam and other platforms, Undertale, Hyperlight Drifter, Shovel Knight and Hotline Miami to name a few popular ones. I mention this only to say that unlike Construct I don’t expect to have export issues that cause the game to just crash or not work on random computers.
So, what does all this mean for you. Well, a lot, and also not much to be honest. As you are probably expecting the current game will stagnate for a bit. Attached with this update is a small patch that will hopefully address a few more issues that were brought up just to try and bring what’s there to a more stable state. After this however I plan to let it sit.
I will start the process of redeveloping the game as a sort of 2.0 version in Game Maker. I don’t know exactly when I’ll start uploading the new version. I’ll probably wait until its at least comparable to what it is now before doing so. To answer a question that might be on your mind, no, you will not have to repurchase the game. Once the new version is ready, I’ll just overwrite what is currently on Steam and you’ll have the new version.
I apologize for all of this however. If you asked me about 4 months ago if I thought I’d go in this direction I would have thought you were crazy. It’s a conclusion that took me some time to come to but has been in my idle thoughts for at least a year now. For a long time I believed I could just push through the issues and fix them but I eventually realized it just wasn’t meant to be. I feel sort of cliché saying this but I want this game to be the best I can make it. Its 100% a passion project and I want to do it justice. This seems to be a painful, but necessary step to accomplish that.
I do plan to continue posting updates on progress each month so I won’t just go completely silent but to be honest I don’t have a good idea of how long this will take. Once I get stuck in I’ll probably get a better idea. I can essentially cheat off of the current version of the game so it shouldn’t be nearly as intensive as making everything originally. Not to mention I wasted a ton of time in original development just learning and making systems that wouldn’t come to fruition. With a proper plan in place none of that should be much of a problem.
This is however where you all come in, if anyone is still reading this lol, I’m sorry its so long. As I think I’ve said in the past I don’t expect much in the form of feedback, but the game is early access and I believe hearing the opinions of players is important to the creation process. While I can’t promise anything, starting in a new engine does have many benefits. Most specifically, almost anything can be changed. So, if you have something you really want to see, or something you hate about the current game I’d love to hear it as I can take all that into account when creating the new one. I already have a laundry list of modifications I want to add to make the overall experience smoother. From little things like making the cooking interface easier to read at a glance to big things like remaking the map and maybe sprucing up farming to have a bit more substance.
Basically, everything is on the table at this point so feel free to let me know. I am going to say this one thing however, because I’m sure it would come up. Multiplayer. Multiplayer is something I’ve seen people request. While I think it would be cool, I have done some contemplating on the subject. As with planning I’m trying to look ahead for potential roadblocks. Multiplayer would be cool but I think that the game is already really big, putting it in a new engine will surely have its own complications. Trying to implement multiplayer on top of that would likely result in huge issues. While I wish I could do it, I think I have to make the decision to forgo it.
Anyway, thanks for reading, being patient, and generally awesome. I know this game isn’t some massive internet hit but it makes me happy to have any player base that enjoys something (flaws and all) that I’ve made. I hope that this signals the start of something even better that you all will get to enjoy.
And as usual, below is a list of the changes for the new patch, they are fairly minimal as it feels like a waste to really go hard when the game isn’t going to be developed in this engine anymore.
Verdant Village V0.4.8.5.2 Full Changelog
Bug Fixes
- Made some slight changes to pastures that should hopefully stabilize them
- All crops will once again patch (although this doesn’t matter too much given that this is the last patch)
- Fixed an achievement to get 10 rabbit’s feet
- Fixed an achievement to tap a certain number of trees
- Fixed an achievement to gain a certain number of honeycomb
- Fixed Full Time Forager achievement
- Fixed achievement for getting 9k heat (if you are already over 9k just add more heat and it should give you the achievement)
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